July 27, 2009

• The Dangers of the Over Personalization of Injustice

  Start with racism. For no other reason than it’s the big topic in the news.

  One of the issues that prevents us from combating social injustice with regards to race is that it always becomes personal.  Racial Profiling for example.

  If you start to discuss the idea of racial profiling, people start to assume that what you mean by that is that the police are racists. That there’s a ton of racist bastards in the police force.  That racists are everywhere. And then soon you have every white person thinking that every black person is calling them racist. Which in turn leads every black person to assume that every white person is calling them racist against whites. 

  The problem is, the whole dialectic is WAAAY too personal. 

  Racist people do exist. There are bigoted people who are bigoted against white people, against black people, against hispanic people, against asian people. They really do exist. And when you meet one it usually does suck.

  But the vast majority of people, really aren’t.

  At least not in the sense or to the degree that it really matters. I mean like the song says maybe “We’re all a little bit racist”, but that doesn’t mean we’re all evil people hating each other, out to get one another, no matter what the case, no matter what the circumstances just because they have a skin color or a racial heritage we don’t like. Most people aren’t. Most people are trying to be the best people they can be.

  People discriminate all the time, but not all the time intentionally. Not all the time vindictively. In fact most of the time not any of those things. People are just usually doing what they’ve always known trying to keep their head down and be normal.

  Even the people who blurt out their racist stereotypical words and insults aren’t always all THAT racist. I mean a lot of them wouldn’t attack a person of the other race, wouldn’t do anything blatantly illegal or cruel just because someone is of the other race. Some would. MOST wouldn’t. Most are just blowing hot air. They might follow a real racist person but they themselves aren’t really that racist.

  So we go to the Sergeant Crowley and Henry Louis Gates incident.  The sad thing about this incident is that some people jumped to the conclusion that Sergeant Crowley was a racist and others jumped to the conclusion that anyone who was defending Henry Louis Gates was CALLING Sergeant Crowley a racist. And that in turn leads to accusations that Henry Louis Gates was a racist or that anyone defending Gates was ALSO a racist. Including of course President Obama. And surely you can see where THAT’S going to lead right?

  Suddenly unless you shut up and said NOTHING about the incident, somebody somewhere was thinking you were a HORRIBLE RACIST BASTARD AND YOU DESERVE TO DIE!!

  But that’s just plain ridiculous.

  I have no belief at all from what I know of the two men that either Gates or Crowley were or are particularly racist. Nor does it seem by all accounts do any of the people who know them think they are. I also don’t think President Obama is a racist. I certainly don’t think *I’M* a racist.

  But I have an opinion. And my opinion is that Gates should not have been arrested. That opinion might change as more evidence arises, but that’s my opinion right now. I generally think that too many people are arrested too quickly all the time. It’s not because he was black that he shouldn’t have been arrested, it’s because there doesn’t seem to be any good reason for him to be arrested. Then again, like I said with more evidence I might change my mind. But I doubt any new evidence that might be revealed would lead me to think that any of the men involved is a racist. At worst I suspect I might conclude that one or the other or both of the men “acted stupidly” and by that I would not mean to imply in any way shape or form that either man WAS stupid. God knows I’ve “acted stupidly” far too many times in the past. For the sake of my  own self-esteem I’m not about to assume that one incident of stupid behavior results in a condemnation of someone’s overall intellect.

  We really need to just chill a little with that idiotic characterization of everyone as being racist. The word is WAY over played.

  The problem is… there doesn’t HAVE to be any racists involved for a racial injustice to occur. Most race problems are systemic. They are institutional.

  And institutional problems are characterized by the State of the System. It’s all about the numbers. If we want to ask about racial profiling, if it’s real, we just look at the numbers. And numerous studies have shown. Racial profiling absolutely exists. In many places around the country black people are convincted more often, arrested more often, stopped more often, ticketed more often even when all other conditions are kept equal.  Across the board. The same is true of hispanics. With particular crimes and violations you can show statistics that show particular racial profiling taking place with regards to those incidents.

  That’s an institutional problem. It’s a REAL problem. Whether or not Gates/Crowley existed it would be a real problem. Even if neither of them have ever had a racist bone in their entire body. It’d STILL be a problem. You just don’t need racists for there to be a race problem.

  In fact that’s ALWAYS been the case. It’s not the case that two hundred years ago every white person was just a bunch of evil dickheads who just decided to keep black people enslaved for the sheer fun of it. Sure there may have been some, but most of those people were just regular people too. They weren’t bad people. They were trapped in a bad system.   A system that institutionalized a belief structure that told them not to look at, pay attention to, or think of as black people as real human beings. A system that promoted certain stereotypes and false perceptions. An system that set black people at a lower level to whites intentionally in order to perpetuate that system.

  There are some bad guys here definitely. Evil people who worked hard to create that system and to perpetuate that system. But not most people. Most people were only guilty of the sin of indifference. And that at times can be a terrible sin, but it’s one that we’re all guilty of almost all the time. People are starving and dieing across the world every moment of every day and we do nothing. Because we’re indifferent. We’re trapped within the system and we don’t have a particular interest in changing it. We just want to be left alone to live our own lives in whatever happiness we can find.  People of every race 200 years ago were the same way.

  But luckily they didn’t stay that way. Some courageous people white and black alike decided that the system was wrong. That it was unjust. They decided that it had to change.  And they knew that without that change in the system racism would forever be a part of the society. And when unjust systems prevail it creates an environment where the truly monstrous can act with impunity.

  But what if instead of trying to change the system, those courageous fighters of civil rights had just focused on individuals. They easily could have. Picked certain people they thought were “evil” and tried to vilify them, call them names, heck maybe even go on vigilante squads to try and execute them.. lynch them. Kill the evil racist bastards!

  It wouldn’t have WORKED. That’s what would have happened. Not only would racism still be prevalent, it could very well have gotten worse. Here’s how.

  People get indignant when you tell them they are bad people. People don’t like to be accused of being evil. When they are told that, they become pissed off. They get mad. They fight back. They start calling the other people names. And soon it’s a fight. And who wins in a direct fight? The group with the most POWER. 

  But thankfully the social justice movements DIDN’T focus on the people. Sure every once in a while they pointed out particularly egregious examples of immorality. But by and large they focused on the system. Changing the system was what mattered. Removing the forces that institutionalized racism was what mattered. Changing the power dynamic was what mattered.

  They didn’t succeed in doing that completely but they made enormous progress. And we’ve been making more and more progress year after year dealing with making a better and better system. Sometimes the world suffers big set backs but there’s a general trend forward.

  So fast forward again to the present and look again at the question of Racial Profiling. What *is* racial profiling? Is it a bunch of police officers acting like jerks? Does it mean law enforcement is evil and we should all distrust them and hate them?

  NO!

  It’s a systemic problem. An institutionalized problem that begins at a cultural level with you and me and everyone else who all unbeknown to them have preconceived notions and ingrained perspectives about one another thanks to the society in which they were raised. It’s an institutional problem that insinuates its way into police forces that are trying to do their job in the best way that they can and in the process whether they know they are doing it or not, according to the statistics, target hispanic and black individuals far more often than they do whites.  And it extends from there to other races and creeds depending on the nature of the suspected crime.

  Part of being a law enforcement officer of any kind is using your instinct to figure out who to stop and where to look for things going wrong. But when people rely on their instincts their inherent internal biases and misconceptions will play a part, however small those biases and misconceptions may be. That doesn’t mean they’re all RACISTS. It just means they’re all HUMAN.

  But if the system is allowed to persist though, those few, tiny minority who actually ARE racist pricks can act with impunity within the system. They’re behavior seems not out of the ordinary because they are just like everyone else. The only ones who know about them are their victims.

  We can’t go on a witch hunt to root those tiny few people out. If we did everybody would feel maligned. It just doesn’t work that way.  First you fix the system. Then the bad apples become obvious.

  How do we fix this systemic problem then?  Well you can’t do it by telling the cops to just “cut it out”. You can’t do it by making a big hubub over Gates and Crowley (thought that might help get people *talking* about solutions).  It’s just not that easy. It’s a hard problem. It’s a real problem. And it needs to be solved. And a lot of that is going to be a slow and steady process. Further integration of police forces. Reducing ethnic crime. Changing the way cultures are portrayed in the media. Changing how people are taught about race in their family, in their churches, and in their schools. More cultural sensitivity training and awareness workshops for police officers and everyone else.  And of course just waiting. Over time future generations become more open to treating people they interact with every day as equals just because they’ve never known any differently.

  Over Personalization of Injustice is a huge problem not just with Race but with virtually ALL injustices.   Take for example Torture. When the scandal broke of the pictures of Abu Ghraib prison, it was a horrible incident. But what did we take from it? We personalized it. What a few really HORRIBLE people. SHAME ON THEM!

  But what was the real problem? It was the SYSTEM in which they operated. The system that CREATED them. It was a system that tolerated anything if it meant stopping the dangerous evil terrorists. It was an institutional problem. But because we focused on personalizing it we couldn’t fight it. And that institutional system is still one people are fighting to change today.

  Move on. All the major debates of the day are constantly OVER personalized.

  Gay Marriage debates involve vilifying gay people on one side and vilifying those “evil” churches on the other. At one point it got so bad as the vilification of “evil” black people for daring to vote against gay marriage in California. Don’t get me wrong, telling people when they’re in the WRONG is important. You shouldn’t avoid it.  But you have to make a distinction, they’re NOT the problem. Some particular person who was raised in a catholic church and taught to be intolerant of gays is NOT the problem. It’s the system that’s the problem. A system that utilizes homophobia to promote the ends of particular persons and institutions.  A system that teaches people from a young age that it’s ok to think of homosexuals as different from everybody else. That’s what needs to change.

  Abortion is similarly over personalized. No matter which side you are on. The man who killed Dr. Tiller personalized it to just stopping a few “evil” doctors. But by doing so he did not promote or further his cause in any meaningful way. The system that allows abortions and the belief of the society that abortion should be allowed remains unaltered despite his efforts.

  Likewise after his murder the tendency on the Pro-choice side was to villify his killer and people like him and in turn it often lead to a villification of everyone who is pro-life as a group.  That didn’t help. That just made people who are pro-life all the more angry and adamant. It didn’t sway anyone to the pro-choice side.

  Neither Dr. Tiller nor the man who killed him are the PROBLEM. The problem is that the culture is on the fence about the system issue of how abortion should be handled in the US. The problem is there is no consensus principle on what is right and no or little legal foundation to back it up. You want to “fix” abortion (whichever side you think has the right fix) you have to change the way people THINK about it. Just calling everybody mean names doesn’t do it.

  When we think about problems of injustice it’s really important to figure out what is causing the injustice to exist. Is it a single person. Is it a group. Is it a business. Is it an institution. Or is it something inherent in the culture. An ingrained way of looking at it.  In short you have to figure out if the problem is system and if it is identify the system that is problematic and fix IT. But if you’re centered instead around finding all the “bad people” and getting rid of them, you’ll end up solving nothing at all. And in many cases you’ll just answer injustice with more injustice making things worse overall.

  • 2:11 pm
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